ABOUT
CTHQ is a gathering space supporting artists working at the intersection of art and politics as they continue to plot, orchestrate, and recharge from cultural, political, and social organizing work.
Rooted in a legacy of art and activism, CTHQ emerges from the rebelliousness of artist organizers in the Lower East Side, where a critical network of neighborhood art, health, and education centers, experimental theater, protest collectives, and community-owned housing, cultural, and green spaces self organized to claim and shape space for artistic and political production.
CTHQ sits within Creative Time’s historic and ongoing work to gather artists to share tactics for political change most notably through the Think Tank, Summit, and Reports. Growing within a lineage of visionary and transgressive creative moments, CTHQ serves as a hub for today and tomorrow’s community of socially engaged and politically oriented artists in the neighborhood, citywide, across the country, and around the world.
Contact CTHQ at curatorial@creativetime.org.
ACCESSIBILITY
Entry
CTHQ is located on the 7th Floor of 59 East 4th Street between 2nd and 3rd Avenue in Manhattan. The building entrance has no steps and elevator access is provided directly to CTHQ.
Service animals are welcome.
At this time, CTHQ hours are limited to public programs. Please check the calendar to attend a public program.
Restrooms
One ADA accessible, all-gender restroom is located inside CTHQ.
Covid Guidelines
While masks are not required, they are available to all guests at CTHQ and mask-wearing is encouraged.
If you are feeling sick or have tested positive for Covid-19, we ask that you please refrain from participating in CTHQ programs in order to care for fellow community members.
Accessibility Requests
If you have any questions regarding accessibility or to request specific accommodations, please email: programming@creativetime.org.
HISTORY
Following an extraordinary legacy of neighborhood-wide coalition of small to midsize cultural organizations under the advocacy of the Fourth Arts Block, Creative Time is fortunate to own its office space in the East Village. From the 1970s through today, East 4th Street has been home to a coalition of cultural organizations thwarting the patterns of gentrification to stay in place. With La Mama Experimental Theater Club leading the way, a handful of cultural organizations began moving to the neighborhood in the midst of the fiscal crisis of the 1970s in a deal with the City: vacant buildings and lots, previously seized by the City through eminent domain, were turned over to artists and cultural organizations in exchange for their assuming all maintenance and operations of these spaces. Many of these leases remained in effect for 15-30 years.
In 2005, the City sold six buildings and four vacant lots on the block of East 4th Street between Bowery and 2nd Avenue for $1 each to local cultural organizations. The following year, this block was designated an official Cultural District. Today it houses dozens of theaters, rehearsal studios, film editing suites and a large screening room, and four visual arts organizations. Because of the long-term efforts of these cultural organizations, Creative Time received affordable access to its own space, including CTHQ, several years later.
This is just one example of the neighborhood’s long history of activism. Since the 19th century, the East Village has served as a site for political protest and negotiation of rights, from the 1849 Astor Place Riot, a violent marker of class inequity, to Frederick Douglas’ 1863 delivery of “The Proclamation and a Negro Army” at Cooper Union. Numerous seeds of revolution have fomented in the neighborhood throughout its history, including the Chinese Students Alliance’s dissent against China’s actions in the Sino-Soviet war, the Nuyorican arts movement, anarchist houses and socialist organizing centers, anti-displacement and tenants rights groups, environmental justice actions, a meeting ground for the recent 2020 Black Lives Matter protests, and today’s local Save East River Park coalition of tree and water protectors.
Alongside organizations such as the Museum of Reclaimed Urban Space, Loisaida Center, CHARAS/El Bohio, ABCnoRIO, La Mama, and CTHQ Performance Space, we inherit a legacy of cultural rebelliousness that has defined the history of the neighborhood—CTHQ is situated within a powerful lineage of visionary and transgressive creative moments.
LAND ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
We acknowledge that the site of CTHQ in what is currently called Manhattan occupies Lenapehoking, the homelands of the Lenape. Creative Time stands in solidarity with the Lenape diasporas’ right to return to their ancestral lands. As occupiers of this territory, we recognize the continual displacement of Native people, and we are committing to confronting the ongoing effects of this colonial legacy.
Beneath the colonial identification of any site in North America, there are histories that have been erased, overlooked, contested, and forgotten. We honor the forced labor of enslaved Black people that created this built environment, and the resources and wealth generated from it. We recognize the histories and ongoing practices of displacement that continue to forcibly relocate Black, Indigenous, Puerto Rican and immigrant communities from this neighborhood. We recognize that these historic and present-day racial realities continue to uphold white privilege in the arts, and we commit to dismantling racism in spaces of our work.
We understand that land acknowledgements are often used as an empty stand-in for actual decolonization work and are committed to confronting the ongoing effects of this colonial legacy. To read more about Creative Time’s commitment to decolonization, please read our signed letter of intent with artist Emily Johnson.
